


extension line

by wtfmulder



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-05
Updated: 2017-04-05
Packaged: 2018-10-15 04:35:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10550160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wtfmulder/pseuds/wtfmulder
Summary: The prompt was phone sex. This is smut, smut, smut, with... a plot, of some sort, inexplicably. Set post-Paper Clip.





	

He can’t move without knocking over paper. Open files surround him, stare him down and tell him: You are a sad, sad man. Photos of UFO’s, stark white specks on grainy backgrounds – cones, saucers, the trapezoid (spotted only once in 1947 on the coast of Indonesia by a Dutch tourist drunk off Bintang), domes and disks and winged cigars and his personal favorite, but most implausible: the mothership. Scully would tell him Mulder, you’re crazy. And maybe she’d smile a little, tucking it into her fist like there’s a chance in hell he hadn’t picked up on it immediately. But maybe that’s more implausible. The last time she smiled at him he had to literally come back from the dead and hold their boss at gunpoint. Dana Scully is tough to please. **  
**

Her sister’s file sits on the coffee table – his copy of it, with the frenzied pen marks and the filled out margins and grease stains where he’d been eating and forgotten to wipe his hands. He’s… technically not supposed to have this. They won’t mark it as an X-File. Shoddy agents doing shoddier work with no clue to what goes on in smoke filled rooms are being tasked with, _trusted_ with, the gravely important feat of bringing justice to Melissa Scully and thereby bringing some goddamn peace to one Special Agent Dana Scully, M.D.   
  
He is tasked with being the bearer of bad news.   
  
In the cosmic light of his fish tank he tries to think about space and nothing else. The mothership last seen in Cartegena Colombia the city that founded Miss Colombia did not seem to abduct anybody was just cruising around all the cows were okay. And don’t call her she’s at a conference wait until she gets back.

He knows, he knows she is definitely a ‘rip the bandaid off and all the skin with it’ kind of girl. Takes hits stronger than the Federal Reserve. And this isn’t the worst news, her sister can’t die again, but shit. She’s been so… off lately. So angry and unpredictable. Which he likes, just a little, because he is seriously messed up and thinks he’s probably always needed a friend who also lost a sister to an interminable maze of government conspiracy in space and hates herself for it. There is absolutely no doubt in his mind that she does, and it destroys him. He gets it, he lives it every single day of his pitiful life, but he cannot bear to see it in her. He just can’t. It’s like watching your hero die of a horrible disease or a slow motion car crash or the sun dying out right before your very eyes. And yes, it’s possible he has her on some kind of pedestal.   
  
Don’t call her. It’s funny because he thinks about calling her pretty often now, tragic details about murdered siblings aside. She’s hilarious and throaty and way more willing to talk to him about his favorite science fiction technologies at night, way more willing to weigh in on whether they’ll actually be possible in the near future. On the phone she is wearing sweaters with her hair pulled back drinking a glass of wine and thinking only about what’s going to happen when she sees him in the office tomorrow, where they’re going to go. Don’t call her.  
  
She calls him.

He’s kind of knocked on his ass. Papers go flying when he scrambles to answer the phone and a glass of tea almost spills all over Melissa’s smiling face. He rights the cup before answering, whisking the file away and tossing it on his desk.   
  
“Mulder,” he says.  
  
“Mulder, it’s me,” she replies.   
  
“Hey Scully. What time is it there?”  
  
She huffs out a laugh, and it feels pretty damn good. “Mulder, I’m in Bethesda. If I throw a rock I might hit the Hoover building.”   
  
“Oh, it felt a little farther than that.” He knows she will smile at this, if only to placate him.   
  
“Three more days, Mulder.” And now he’s smiling. “Three more days and I’ll be back and we can go check out that… what was it again…”   
  
“You’re slacking, Agent Scully. Mass cosmic awareness. A mining town in Nevada – in it’s entirety, I am talking about the _whole town_ – has suddenly decided to do away with coal because of its effects on the environment. These people have lived and breathed coal their entire lives, and now they’re suddenly denouncing it?”  
  
“That would certainly explain their distaste. The mining industry is one of the most heavily exploited at the expense of public health. They’re all dying of black lung.” 

“Yes, but would that distaste generally lead to numerous cases of ecoterrorism resulting in the deaths of four people?” The line remains silent. “Sudden urges to be more environmentally conscious or socially responsible are commonly noted symptoms by alien abductees.”   
  
“You believe the _whole t_ own was abducted?”  
  
“I don’t know what I believe, Scully,” he replies, leaning back and rubbing at his neck. “We have to go investigate first. I have my theories.”  
  
“Oh, I’m sure you do.” It’s fond, fonder than she’d let herself be were they face to face. He is glad they are not.   
  
“Scully,” he says. Her full attention is like a physical feeling. It’s almost like she’s breathing down his neck. “Scully, I have some news. About Melissa.”  And the atmosphere change – that, that is like a physical feeling, too. He’d had her back for five minutes and then he lost her again, which seems to be a habit for him.   
  
“News? What news? What have you heard?” In the way all of these cases go Scully has been sanctioned off to the ‘family’ side of things. She’s not an agent here. She hears what everybody else hears, when everybody else hears it. He’d go mad. He has to tell her.  
  
“They have two suspects for her murder,” he lets out. He does not elaborate. He knows she will understand what he means, will pick up on it immediately.  
  
“But it’s not him.” Her tone is flat, emotionless. “They don’t have him.”   
  
“It doesn’t appear to be,” he says gently. “They’re lackeys. They have a combined IQ of 46. They’re not the kind of men the Syndicate would send to do the job.”   
  
“I sense there is a but.”  
  
“But are the kind of men They would hire to do this job. Take the place of the real guys in order to escape a harsher fate.”   
  
“You think they’re hired bodies, happy to rot.”   
  
“Their alibis are shot with holes and somehow each of them have both been given a motive,” he admits. “They’re not fighting it.”

The wrong man goes to jail and there will never be justice for Melissa or for Scully. In the hospital room Scully turned to him and told him there was no justice, not at all. He’d like to believe that isn’t the truth. But sometimes… it really, really doesn’t feel that way.  
  
“It should’ve been me,” she says, as if she were saying it’s cold out. Or your mail has arrived. Or what her plans are for this weekend. He is so close to telling her he’s glad it wasn’t that it frightens him. She may never forgive him. Mulder is silent for too long, or maybe she’s just had enough, because she continues: “I didn’t call to talk about this.”   
  
That catches him off guard, and he pulls his legs up with him on the couch in a fit of nervous intrigue. “What did you call to talk about, Scully?” he asks softly.

Silence on the other end, and then a weary sigh. “I don’t know, actually. I’m not sure why I called.”   
  
“Maybe it was good for you to get away,” he offers. “Take some time.”   
  
She laughs, a little bitter and resentful. Not of him but maybe of life. “Mulder, have you ever hung out with a bunch of doctors? They’re not the most delightful bunch.” A beat, and she adds: “Don’t say anything. I know you want to say something. I am telling you not to say it.”   
  
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says. “You’re the most delightful person I know.”   
  
“Shut up, Mulder.”  
  
“Especially when you tell me to shut up.”   
  
There’s a sound on the other end, like fabric moving against fabric. She’s lying down in her hotel bed with her weirdly formal silk pajamas and a good book on the other pillow, he imagines. But she called you instead. She doesn’t know why she did but she did. She doesn’t want to talk about Melissa. Don’t be a brooding asshole and try and force it out of her. She doesn’t want to talk about Melissa. “How is your trip, Scully?”  
  
She sighs again, a large rush of air that makes him wince at the volume and the hairs on his neck stand up. “It’s okay, so far. Tonight was just the opening ceremony. Wining and dining and formal wear and all of that. I have my panel tomorrow morning.” A little groan plays in his ear, the one she makes when she’s stretching forward with her hands behind her back. “I cannot believe the dress I stuffed myself into tonight. I’m going to be scrubbing glitter off my skin for days.”   
  
“Hey, you never dress up for me.” And he does think about it, though he really, really shouldn’t. Has he ever seen Scully in a dress? He has seen her in a bra and panties, and that one time where she had to change in the back of their rental and he told her he wouldn’t look but hey he kind of did. Scully wears thigh highs in the summer and it had been all he could think about for two straight weeks. He’s never seen her in a dress, though. A sparkly one?   
  
“You never take me anywhere nice,” she says dryly. “I think I’ve heard this one. Now you’re supposed to tell me I nag you too much.”  
  
“You nag me too much, Scully. What color was the dress?”   
  
“Why do you want to know?” She sounds faintly annoyed, the way she does anytime someone mentions her femininity. She likes her pants, he likes her in pants. But a sparkly dress?   
  
“So I have a detailed description to regale at the Bureau watercooler. Everyone will be astonished. No one will call me Spooky anymore because I will be crowned king of hot gossip.”   
  
“People will stop calling you Spooky when you stop talking about poltergeists and alien probing,” she grumbles. But she gloriously relents for some unknown reason and tells him, “Green. The dress was green. And I loathe it with a burning passion.”   
  
“Green, huh?” He likes her in green enough. He’d been gunning for blue. She’s got this blue shirt thing that always looks really nice, makes her cheeks look pinker than they are. Don’t talk about Melissa. “What does it look like? Like what’s the cut?”  
  
She doesn’t answer for a moment; he’s not sure what she’s thinking, the question is innocent enough. But apparently she doesn’t feel that way. “Why the hell do you want to know, Mulder? Are you trying to break in to the fashion industry?”   
  
“Well, tell me about the opening session then,” he says kind of desperately. Scully what the hell do you want me to say? I’m sorry your sister is dead? I’m not sorry it wasn’t you? Conversation doesn’t come easy when you are _choked with guilt._  
  
“Long-sleeved,” she answers instead, her voice hard. “Boatneck collar.” He can see it. It looks nice on her. Classic, like an old film star. But then she adds, lowly: “Tight, Mulder. The dress was very tight.”   
  
Oh, he thinks. Oh, shit. What the hell was that.   
  
His voice gets stuck in his throat and it’s just as well – what can he even say to that? He’s too confused to find it sexy, too caught off guard to shock her back.   
  
She does not take mercy on him.  
  
“I got compliments, the whole night.” She continues. Her voice gets deeper and deeper, like a bass guitar, like something important and integral but not necessarily front and center. “Others liked it, I didn’t.” She pauses. He does not respond. “But it wasn’t because I didn’t look good.”   
  
There’s an in, right there. There’s something he can say to bring them back to where they were before. She left it open. I’m sure you did look good, honey, in a stupid southern accent, the only accent he can do. You should model it for me sometime, lascivious and lewd enough for her to roll her eyes and not file a report with HR. He says nothing.

“Because I did look good, Mulder,” she says. “I looked very good. And I’m sad you didn’t get to see it.”

The rasp in her voice is not all sex. There’s longing and pain and grief so deeply embedded it’ll probably be there forever. But there is sex. Good lord, there is sex. And he knows it because he’s never heard it before, not from her. Not in her.   
  
“Scully?” In his voice there is longing, and pain, and grief so deeply embedded it will be there forever. And there is sex. There is sex sex sex. “What are we doing?”   
  
Fabric on fabric again, her too-loud sigh puffing in his ear. This time he winces for an entirely different reason. “Do you want me to, Mulder? Do you want me to dress up for you?”   
  
“I don’t think…”  
  
“Mmm.” His stomach slides hotly, his cheeks go red. That sound felt like a caress. “You could tell me no.”  
  
“I could,” he says skeptically. He wants to giggle. He feels crazy.  
  
“Yeah, you could. You could tell me no.” He thinks about it. He does. Because this isn’t right, and Scully is not herself, and there are other ways to distract her from Melissa and make sure she returns to him whole and unscarred. They’re not supposed to be doing this. His attraction for her thus far had been a latent thing, hidden behind layers of intense need so asexual he at times wanted her to cradle him like a child. “You’re my superior, right? The department head. You could tell me no anytime you like.” Oh, fucking hell. “Or you could tell me yes.” Oh jesus christ. “Tell me, Mulder.”   
  
Latent is not absent. Not a bit. Not even a little bit.   
  
And he is fucked up. A lot. A lot fucked up. Like the kind of fucked up you have to be when you find out in the bullpen your partner fucked not one but two of her instructors and you take an early lunch to stop yourself from beating the hell out of Fred from national security who was a friend to Agent Willis and doesn’t know when to shut his mouth. So you file a complaint for sexual harassment and creating a hostile work environment instead, the only bureaucratic bullshit that ever made you feel good, only to immediately erase your good deed by disrespecting your aforementioned partner so thoroughly you almost paint the bathroom stall a whole new color. That – that might have been when it stopped being so latent. He’s not sure. There was the thigh highs, that day she chose a darker lip shade, that time he almost called her name while amidst the throes of passion with a vampire. He hadn’t even known then. He thought he was grieving.   
  
He tells her yes. What was he supposed to tell her?  
  
“How tight was the dress, Scully?” he asks gruffly, letting the desire consume his voice. He’s already tugging his t-shirt off, reaching to palm himself through his jeans. This is a routine he understands well. It’s different (he’s not paying for it) but the mechanics are the same, only that his wallet is happier. But his soul, oh god his soul. He’s not surprised to find himself mostly-hard and sticking to his boxers.   
  


“I hate the dress,” she tells him harshly. “I’m not wearing it. I’m wearing a suit.”  
  
Okay, good. Good he can work with that. God can he work with that. He’s worked with that for months.   
  
“Color? Pants or skirt?”   
  
“Skirt, it’s too hot in Nevada for pants. It’s the maroon one. I like how it makes my legs look.”  
  
“We’re in Nevada?” They’re in Nevada. He’s touched. He loves her legs, compact and lightly muscled and so smooth under her naughty little thigh highs. Oh, god what has he gotten himself into. He traces the head of his cock bulging through the denim and lifts his hips in the air at how good it feels just from that. He wants to pull it out. He wants to wait, too. “On the coal mining case? Where?”  
  
“At the motel. It’s not like the one I’m in now.  We’re at one of those dives you always pick. I hate the motels you pick, Mulder”  
  


“I know. I know you do. We need the money for the travel expenses. Are we – are we arguing? Talking about the miners?”   
  
“No,” her breath catches. What is she doing. Oh god what is she doing. Licking the tips of his fingers he reaches down to tweak his nipple, pretending it’s her doing it, pretending it’s her nipple and he’s worrying it with his teeth. “No. It’s night time. We’re back and we’re having dinner in my room.” And she breathes out again, trailing into a moan.  
  
“Scully are you – are you touching yourself? For me?” he swallows and thinks to himself, fuck it, unbuttons and unzips and shoves his hand down the front of his boxers.   
  
“Yes, I am,” she says, and she does not elaborate. Fine. He can imagine it just perfectly in his head, decides she’s taking the same route he is. So rarely do they think alike but when they do it’s always brings them closer. She’s pinching her nipples, wishing it was his mouth. She’s cupping her pussy through her pajamas and grinding against her hand for the tease of it. Like he would do it. He likes it slow.

“Eating dinner,” he prompts her. He could take the lead, of course, the scenario is promising and he has ten different ideas for where it might go. But this is her story and she’s trying to tell him something. Maybe one day years later he’ll pick up on it; as for now he just focuses on her voice, on how it starts low low low and rises up with the suspense of a roller coaster, on what she’s doing to herself to make her sound like that, on if she’ll ever let him do it to her.   
  
“Eating dinner.” She repeats. “Chinese. And you’re trying to make me laugh.”  
  
“And you don’t?”  
  
“You’re not that funny,” she says. “Not usually.”   
  
“But sometimes–” he moans and finally pushes his clothes off until he’s completely naked, collapsing back against the couch with harried urgency. He keeps the phone cradled between his cheek and neck, tonguing his fingers one more time and reaching down to jack himself roughly. “Sometimes you laugh. Sometimes you can’t help it.”  
  
“Sometimes you’re funny,” she shoots back, and he is made stupid with adoration. “I’m taking off my clothes, Mulder. In the motel and right now. I’m taking them off and I want it to be you.”  
  
“It is me, Scully,” he promises. He looks down at his cock, jutting out from a mass of tangled curls and so hard in his large hand it hurts. Would she like it? God would it fit. Yeah it would. She’d have to work at it but it’d fit. “You’re wearing a suit. Your maroon one. I kiss you first and you taste so good I get distracted. I unbutton your blazer. The buttons go to your chest, right? And you normally wear a gray sweater with it.”   
  
“Yes, yes, that’s the one,” she whimpers. He hears – shit, he hears something _wet_ , something slick, and it can’t be but maybe it is. Maybe she’s riding her fingers and pretending it’s his cock because she’s as impatient as him and she can’t help but fast forward a little. In his mind she’s already undressed and his mouth is between her legs. But still, her story, her pacing. “Do you like that one, Mulder? Do you like the way I look in it?”  
  
“I like the way your cute little ass looks in it,” he replies darkly, stroking himself now in earnest. His words come out in short bursts as he tries to form them around his heavy breathing. “I like when you take the blazer off because the basement is too hot and you’ve got that tight sweater on. I want you out of the suit.”   
  
“It’s off. It’s off. All of it. And you’re…”  
  
Completely naked and so fucking hard for you I’m about to come apart at the seam. Thinking about your pretty mouth and clever tongue and the feeling of your hands in my hair. How did we get here? Don’t talk about Melissa.

“Clothed,” she finishes instead and oh, Scully, that’s _dirty_. “Clothed. I’m naked and you’re fully clothed, and you have me spread out on the bed.”   
  
“I do? Are you like that right now? Spread out?”   
  
“Mm, no, I’ve got my h-hand between my legs and I’m sort of–” she chokes, and he can guess what she’s sort of doing. “Rubbing against it. Mulder are you. Are you?”  
  
“Are you kid– yes, yes Scully I’m touching myself. For you. I have been since this first started.”  
  
“You’re always so defensive,” she says, but it’s filled with laughter. Until it’s not. “I’m. I’m fingering myself, Mulder. I’ve got. Two fingers. And. Um.” Lacking eloquence, almost incoherent. He wants to see what it’d be like if he was actually touching her. If anyone needs a break from their own mind it’s Scully, and him, of course, but he’d give it to her if only one of them could have it.   
  
“I have you spread out on the bed,” he picks up. His eyes squeeze shut, his fist tightens, his free hand slips down to fondle his balls. “I have you spread out and Scully. Scully. Let me. Let. I want to.”  
  
“What? You want to what?”  
  
“I want to lick your pussy, Scully,” he says in a rush, gritting his teeth. There’s the dim awareness that he’s just kicked it up about ten different levels and she might bail, which is terrifying. What’s more terrifying is how viscerally he wants it, how he’s thought of it in the past but never quite yearned for it so badly, never licked his lips and tried to guess what she’d taste like. “It’d be – so good. I’d make you come so _hard_.”   
  
“Say please,” she demands huskily. He bites his lower lip hard enough to draw blood, willing desperately not to come. The mothership soaring over the British Isles in 1975, everyone pissed at the lack of crop circles.

“Please,” he says. “I want to put my mouth all over you. I want to lick you out until you’re begging me to stop. Please let me do it.” She doesn’t respond for a moment, so he takes the time to listen to what she’s doing on the other end. Yes. Yes, she’s definitely fucking herself. He hears something like a headboard slamming on a wall, a muffled shout. And then finally, finally, “Yes. Yes, you can do it. Tell me how you’d do it.”  
  
Oh, GOD. It’s like every time she says something he’s hit with a wave of fresh arousal, each one more ruinous and completely mind numbing than the one before. His body goes hot all over for the fiftieth time as he fucks his fist and thinks about dragging his tongue from the small of her back to the crack of her ass and further down, tugging her labia with his lips and licking the juices off of her thighs. He tells her this.  
  
“I’d do it so sweetly, and so softly, you’d come before you could ever expect it, and then I’d do it again, and again, and again. I wouldn’t let up. You’d have to pull my hair out my head to get my attention.”  
  
“Mulder, fuck.” He’s heard her say it once before; she’d been cursing out a local cop for calling him a creep. He still doesn’t know why she got so heated. His reaction now is not all that different to what it had been the last time he’d heard it. “Mulder, fuck me. Fuck me fuck me fuck me _please_.”

“Yeah, Scully, I’ll fuck you,” he hisses. His hand is her wet heat, she’s sinking down on him, he’s got her folded in half on his couch and he’s got her on her hotel bed, the nice one she’s writhing in right now, with her back to his chest and her calf in his hand so he can look down and watch himself push into her. The pressure builds, and by the way she sounds he is positive she feels it too, in the base of her spine and then everywhere else. He’s never wanted to see her face more in his life. “I’ll fuck you so good you’ll never forget it. I’ll fuck you into the mattress. Anything you want it I’ll give it to you, Scully, always gonna give it to you. Wanna make you come. Are you coming? Oh god tell me I’m going to make you come.”  
  
“You’re going to make me–COME–” she shrieks, and that is _it_ for him. His seeds spills out between his fingers and over the back of his fist and he gasps brokenly into the phone, her name, her full name, the name he’s given her, tells her how much he wants her, thanks her, rocks into his fist until it physically pains him, talks her through her orgasm until she’s shaking from overstimulation and telling him okay okay okay okay.

They breathe together until they’re all caught up with their oxygen and their feelings. He keeps the phone against his cheek and his eyes shut tight. He’ll let her speak first. He tells himself, don’t mention how wrong this was. Don’t talk about Melissa. Space. The mothership descends and no one is taken that day and no one is hurt and the cows are all fine.  
  
“Thank you,” she says finally. The worst part is she means it. That’s fucked up, Scully, he thinks a little sadly. If he wanted a partner just as messed up as him he’s apparently got it now. He knows, without a doubt, no matter how much he’s beginning to wish otherwise, that they will never bring this up again. “I think – I think I needed that.”   
  
“You have to leave me a review in the Washington Examiner,” he jokes sleepily. “It’s only fair.” It doesn’t earn him a laugh. But she doesn’t hang up.  
  
“And thank you for telling me about Melissa.” His eyes pop open and he wraps his hand around the phone to press it closer to his ear. “I don’t know… how you know, or if you’re keeping track of it somehow. But I just. Thank you.”   
  
“Of _course_ , Scully,” he says fiercely. “Don’t thank me for that. Of course I would. Don’t ever thank me for that.”   
  
“I just miss her so much.” The tears in her voice are frighteningly intimate. He hates that he loves it, that he needs it. “It should’ve been me, Mulder. I can’t stop thinking that. It should’ve been me. Why wasn’t it me?”  
  
Because I am the luckiest son of a bitch alive on this planet, he doesn’t tell her.


End file.
